Cadmium colours

In the 1980’s My hubby worked for a few years in a cadmium colour factory, they processed the raw pigments to get  colours from pale yellow, through orange to red and deep matoon red. He bought me jars and jars (empty coffee jars) of the colours home, but as they are made of a heavy metal I decided to give them to a friend who knew how to use them and grind her own oil paint.

I don’t know if he was allowed to bring them but I think he knew I would love the colours and I did. They were the purest colours I had ever seen. To quote Rudolphs song “you could almost say they glowed”. As Cadmium is similar to Lead though, I decided not to use them.

Cadmium colours

Back in the eighties hubby brought a whole load of cadmium colours back from the company where he was doing chemical analysis. I had about eight coffee jars full of cadmium ranging from pale yellow to red to deep maroon. But I didn’t know how to mix them, it was before Google and I had them on a shelf for a year. I also knew Cadmium is a heavy metal although these colours were pigments so hopefully they were safe.

Then a fellow art student asked about them. I agreed to give them to her. I know she used them in many paintings! I often wonder if she used them all, I haven’t seen her for forty years.